5 million MRF opens in Essex

Designed, built and operated by Nordic Recycling on behalf of Holmen, the facility is capable of sorting up to 120,000 tonnes of paper, card, plastic bottles, cans and glass a year (see letsrecycle.com story).

The plant was unveiled at a ceremony yesterday by the Peter J Crofts – the corporate director of Braintree district council – which is one of two local authorities which have already agreed contracts to send material to the plant, alongside Uttlesford district council.

From today, the plant is also taking some material from Thurrock district council on behalf of contractor Veolia.

 Overall, the current tonnage being processed stands at around 50,000 tonnes but over the coming months, Holmen is hoping to win more contracts with local authorities in the Essex, Hertfordshire and North London areas in order to use its full capacity.

Charlie Thompson, recycling manager at Holmen Paper Ltd, said: “We are employing a new business development manager to talk to local councils. We have had a good response from councils in Essex and will be bidding for existing contracts once they come up for renewal.”

Screens

At the Tilbury MRF, bags of commingled dry recyclables are put through a Matthiessen bag splitter before an initial picking line, to pick out obvious contaminants. The material is then put through a series of glass breakers, to remove glass, and American “star-shaped” screens which separate flat paper and card from round bottles and cans.

At the end of the process, the material is hand picked again and run over a magnet and eddy-current separator to remove the metal.

Holmen claims that the unique plant – which was designed and installed by Ken Mills Engineering Ltd – produces very high quality material because it uses glass breakers and screens which it believes are “more effective” than trommels.

At present, the contamination rate for waste paper from the plant stands at only 0.75% – well below the 1.5% maximum contamination allowed by Holmen for use in its mills in Sweden and Spain.

In fact, the plant has been so successful to date that Holmen is planning up to four similar facilities in the UK to provide the company with clean paper which it says it can not always rely on other MRFs to provide.

Materials

Currently, Holmen exports 200,000 tonnes of recovered paper from local authorities, waste management firms and waste paper merchants throughout England and Wales, for recycling into fresh newsprint but expects this figure will rise to 300,000 tonnes by 2010.

Mr Thompson said: “We are talking to county councils at the moment saying that if they can provide a minimum quantity of material we are happy to build a MRF in the county.”

“We are already under pressure from head office to declare where the next plant is going to be and we hope overall there could be three or four MRFs,” he added.

Other materials from the plant are marketed by Nordic Recycling. Mixed plastic bottles are sent to Loughborough recycler J&A Young, where they are sorted into HDPE and PET and aluminium cans are sent to Novelis in Warrington.

Around 10% of the input, which mainly consists of plastic bags and is known as “residue”, is sent to Slough Heat and Power.

At present, there is not fixed market for the glass but Nordic is running trials to use it to make aggregates.

Mr Thompson said: “We offer two ranges of services to local authorities – mixed dry recyclables with or without glass. Glass is very heavy and low value but we are happy to take it.”